Saran999

Fourteen-year-old Shalin Shah worked for seven to 11 hours per day coding as an intern at MakeGamesWith.Us, an iPhone game app developer, and loved every minute of it, he says on his blog about the experience. San Francisco area-based MGWU offers tools and tutorials for developers who want to make their own games for Apple's iOS operating system. When Shah arrived this summer as an intern, this was his first impression: He created his first app ("but come on, it was like the most simple app ever") and then moved on to a more complex game using the Objective-C coding language. Tellingly, Shah doesn't say what his new game actually does — he's not just going to give the idea away, duh — but the portfolio section of his web site indicates that it's coming soon. In the meantime, you can download this productivity app, Ideya, from Shah, which helps you remember and rank all those inspiring ideas you get before you forget them. Other internship highlights included not being in his bedroom all summer:

Remember Google's fancy laptop, the Chromebook Pixel? There's a new one now that's a lot more affordable than the $1,300 Google asks for it. Today, Google and HP announced the HP Chromebook 11, an 11-inch laptop with a super-sharp screen that runs Google's Chrome operating system. It only costs $279. (If you're unfamiliar, Google's Chrome operating system is essentially just a tweaked version of the Chrome browser. Instead of storing most stuff to your computer, you store it all online using the Google Drive cloud storage service.) Even though the device is cheap, it's extremely well built. The Chromebook 11 is made from durable plastic that includes a sturdy frame on the inside so it doesn't bend or creak. It comes in black or white. The white version has a variety of Google-themed color accents like blue, green, or yellow. Another interesting spec: The Chromebook 11 charges with a normal USB cord, the same kind used on just about every non-Apple smartphone or tablet. The screen is just about as sharp as the one on the Chromebook Pixel, but doesn't include touch to keep costs down. (You don't really need touchscreens on a laptop running Chrome anyway.) The Chromebook 11 goes on sale starting today. You can get it directly from Google or at stores like Best Buy.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) wants developers to consider building "virtual consequences" for mayhem into their video games. 'Gamers should be rewarded for respecting the law of armed conflict and there should be virtual penalties for serious violations of the law of armed conflict, in other words war crimes,' read the ICRC's new statement on the matter. 'Game scenarios should not reward players for actions that in real life would be considered war crimes.' Like many a concerned parent or Congressional committee before it, the ICRC believes that violent video games trivialize armed conflict to the point where players could see various brands of mayhem as acceptable behavior. At the same time, the ICRC's statement makes it clear that the organization doesn't want to be actively involved in a debate over video-game violence, although it is talking to developers about ways to accurately build the laws of armed conflict into games. But let's be clear: the ICRC doesn't want to spoil players' enjoyment of the aforementioned digital splatter. 'We would like to see the law of armed conflict integrated into the games so that players have a realistic experience and deal first hand with the dilemmas facing real combatants on real battlefields,' the statement continued. 'The strong sales of new releases that have done this prove that integrating the law of armed conflict does not undermine the commercial success of the games.'"

An 11-year-old Colorado boy may have found a way to literally make a beer that’s out of this world. Michal Bodzianowski, a sixth grader at Douglas County's STEM School and Academy in Highlands Ranch, Colo., recently won a national competition where his beer-making experiment will be flown to the International Space Station, the Denver Post reports. "I really didn't expect this from the start. I just designed this experiment to get a good grade in my class," Bodzianowski told KDVR. A sixth grader at Douglas County's STEM School and Academy in Highlands Ranch, Colo., recently won a national competition where his beer-making experiment will be flown to the International Space Station. The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education sponsored the competition where 11 proposals, out of 744 submitted by 3,900 students, were selected for the flight that will launch in December. Bodzianowski said the idea of bringing beer to space stemmed from a book he read about the Middle Ages. "It was a punishment for crimes, that you couldn't drink beer," Bodzianowski said describing the book called “Gruesome Facts” that explained why beer was popular during mediaeval times, "and most people didn't survive (that) because the water was contaminated." In space, Bodzianowski says that beer can be used “in future civilization as an emergency backup hydration and medical source." That way, if a project explodes, that wounds people and contaminates the water, "the fermentation process could be used to make beer, which can then be used as a disinfectant and a clean drinking source." His teacher, Sharon Combs, is proud of Bodzianowski’s success. “I never expected it to be one of my sixth graders,” Combs said. “But Michal’s got the natural curiosity of people who go after science. He’s very talented.” 6th-grader Michal Bodzianowski performs experiment that will soon test microbrewing in space. Bodzianowski’s experiment will be flown to the International Space Station out of Cape Canaveral in December. Once in space, an astronaut will follow Bodzianowski’s instructions and combine the ingredients of hops, malted barley, yeast and water in a 6-inch silicon tube. "We're just trying to get the yeast to react with the ingredients of beer," Bodzianowski said. "If it doesn't react at all, this tells you it won't work." Despite the risks, Bodzianowski remains optimistic. "It's going to be the greatest moment of my life, so far," he said.

Fitbits, FuelBands, and Jawbones don’t matter and neither does their data unless they make us healthier. That’s why Basis wants to build a platform that unites our fragmented quantified self data and mines it for healthy ways to improve our behaviors. So today Basis announced an $11.75 million extension of its Series B and the hire of Ethan Fassett, former head of platform at gaming giant GREE. The idea of a health data hub isn’t new. The promise is that instead of having one piece of software for each of our devices, all our data flows into a central repository where insights can be gleamed that no single piece of hardware could provide. But all attempts have failed. Even Google couldn’t make it work. But Basis CEO Jef Holove thinks he knows why: They didn’t start with hardware people loved and needed. Hardware, Software, Platform In One That’s where Basis’ own multi-sensor wristwatch comes in. While Fitbit, the Nike FuelBand, and the Jawbone Up just use accelerometers to track your steps and overall physical activity, Basis also tracks your heart rate, perspiration level, skin temperature and more. It’s bigger and costs more, but does a lot more too. Until now, the Basis has been back-ordered. But now the company has finally worked through its “high five-digits” waiting list and is starting to openly sell the Basis B1 watch to the public for $199. The watch hooks into Basis’ software that collects all your data. But beyond the typical charts and graphs whose novelty wears off because they don’t really tell you much, Basis crunches its multi-sensor data to provide more serious health insights. It can give you actionable suggestions for how to modify your behavior, and encourage you to keep exercising, This combats the number one problem with fitness devices, which is that people stop wearing them because they don’t feel like they’re getting any real value out of it. What could make those suggestions even better is data more other non-Basis devices and apps. So Basis plans to build a device-agnostic platform with Fassett’s experience and part of the $11.75 million it raised from Intel Capital (which will help it bolster its supply chain to crank out watches faster), iNovia Capital, Dolby Family Trust, Stanford University, and Peninsula-KCG, as well as previous investors Norwest Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, and DCM. The funding expands the $11.5 million Series B that Basis raised in March, bringing it to a total of $32.3 million in venture capital. Holove explains that “The platform we’re building is intended to be open. There’s no reason we couldn‘t have complementary devices contribute data and make habits out of that data.” Becoming the central quantified self hub brings all sorts of opportunities, both to make the human race healthier and to make a lot of money, so it’s no wonder Basis was able to raise again. With its platform pre-populated with data from its own watch, Basis may have the gravity to attract data from other devices. And there are plenty of other devices on the way. Surviving The Smartwatches Beyond helping the Basis watch distinguish itself from other health hardware, its extra sensors and software are critical to it surviving the coming onslaught of smartwatches from Pebble Samsung, LG, Sony…and likely Google and Apple. Most have or will have accelerometers and be able to serve as rudimentary fitness trackers. They could make Fitibit obsolete. The question is whether smartwatches will give so many of us a compelling reason to buy them that the industry can support a half dozen manufacturers or more. I’m skeptical. Most smartwatches seem to just make what we already do with our phones a tiny bit easier. Gee thanks, it now takes two hands to answer a phone call? One with the watch strapped to it, and one to press the buttons? That doesn’t sound worth my dollars yet. Basis’ Holove agrees, telling me “If we’re going to ask consumers to wear technology, it must do something magical because you’re wearing it, that’s fundamentally impossible if you’re not wearing it. And I think smartwatches miss this.” Basis couldn’t be in your pocket like a phone with an accelerometer. It has to be on your wrist to get the rest of its readings. And since Basis doesn’t just collect data but uses it to enhance your lifestyle, Holove says “When they look at it, the value is very clear. People know why they’re buying us.”

Google has pushed out a new version of its browser onto the developer channel, and with it we’re getting an interesting glimpse at the company’s next move to bring its Chrome-based operating system to a wider audience. Essentially, launching the browser within Windows 8’s Metro-style mode will bring up a multi-window interface, complete with a taskbar and app launcher that looks and feels a lot like Chrome OS. As seen on the screenshot below, the bottom shelf contains an app launcher to the left next to Chrome, Gmail, Google, Docs, and YouTube icons for quick access. This shelf can also be snapped to the left or right of the screen while icons can be re-arranged or customized with other Chrome Apps. Once you launch an app you can have it run either in tabs or its own window, which you can move around or snap to the sides. With the current stable release, launching Chrome within Windows 8’s Metro-style start screen simply brings up the desktop client in full screen mode. The upcoming version is still a full fledged desktop application; however, according to The Verge, it uses a special mode in Windows 8 that Microsoft has enabled specifically for web browsers allowing them to launch in the "Metro-style" environment providing they're set as default. It’s unclear when the new feature will be graduated onto the stable channel but reports indicate it’s still a little buggy and it crashes occasionally. Google has yet to announce it on the official Chrome blog. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the company taking steps to extend its reach within Microsoft’s operating system. Back in July, it quietly launched its Chrome App Launcher for Windows, and with the introduction of packaged apps, desktop notifications and improved touch support for Chrome, Google is slowly building something that could be seen as a more serious threat to established desktop platforms.

Boutique computer manufacturer Origin PC has announced that it will no longer be selling AMD GPUs due to a number of technical issues. The company will instead be tapping Nvidia for its graphics chips for all future systems. The decision to oust the AMD graphics solutions are based on a number of things, but Origin PC says it is mainly due to the lack of customer satisfation the company has been experiencing pertaining to AMD hardware. In an email to gaming outlet Polygon, co-founder and CEO of Origin PC Kevin Wasielewski said, "Origin PC is dedicated to providing the best experience for our customers and right now that is with Nvidia GPUs. It's not about brand loyalty or marketing; our loyalty is 100 percent to our customers." Not only is it simply a matter of technical issues with hardware itself, Origin PC was also having a hard time internally, citing issues with AMD's support staff. Origin says AMD's extremely relaxed attitude towards stability and driver updates on both desktop and mobile GPUs is also part of the problem. "Primarily the overall issues have been stability of the cards, overheating, performance, scaling and the amount of time to receive new drivers on both desktop and mobile GPUs," said Alvaro Masis, one of the technical support managers at Origin PC. AMD is yet to make a public statement regarding the issue, we will update this article as more information becomes available.

Advanced Micro Devices is launching graphics cards today that use its new R7 and R9 series Radeon graphics processing units (GPUs). These new chips will cover the whole range of computing, from the low end to the high end of the entertainment and gaming PC markets. Normally, graphics chip makers introduce a high-end chip, followed by a series of dumbed-down chips. But AMD is taking the unusual step of introducing graphics across the board, and that should make consumers happy. “We took the bold step of introducing an entire family, all at once, to the public,” said Evan Groenke, the graphics product manager at AMD, in an interview with GamesBeat. “We’re delivering much better performance, and that translates to better value for gamers.” The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company is positioning itself against rivals Nvidia and Intel for the fall season. The new chips have doubled the performance of AMD chips in the past couple of years. They include the AMD Radeon R7 240, the R7 250, and the R7 260X at the low end. These chips will be built into graphics cards aimed at “everyday gamers” looking to boost the graphics performance of their PCs. They are designed to enable faster web browsing and better video editing. The R7 260X graphics card has AMD TrueAudio technology, which enables audio processing on the graphics chip itself. That will deliver features like “true-to-life echoes.” At the high end, AMD is launching the AMD Radeon R9 270X and R9 280X. The highest-end chips will support UltraHD (4K) resolution and AMD Eyefinity multimonitor technology. The R9 270X is targeted at 1080p high-definition resolution while the R9 280X is suited for 2560 by 1440 resolution for graphically demanding games like Battlefield 4. Groenke said that the 280X 3GB card is almost twice as fast as its predecessor Radeon 6970 graphics chip. It is also 39 percent faster than the Nvidia GTX 760 with 2GB of main memory. The chips all share a common heritage of the Graphics Core Next architecture, which is being used in upcoming game consoles the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. They also have support for Mantle, a new AMD technology that matches and tries to outdo Microsoft’s DirectX graphics technology. Games enabled with Mantle will be able to speak the native language of the GCN architecture, enabling better performance and image quality. said Matt Skynner, the corporate vice president and general manager of the graphics business unit at AMD. 280X The R7 240 will be sold in cards that cost $69. The R7 250 will sell in $89 cards, and the R7 260X will sell in $139 cards. The R9 270X will be $199 for 2GB of video memory and $229 for 4GB. The R9 280X will be sold in cards that cost $299. All of the graphics cards will be available on Oct. 11. The chips are built in a 28-nanometer manufacturing process.

Though BioShock games can certainly be fun to play, the titles are lauded more for their story than their first-person-shooting. The two episodes of BioShock Infinite‘s Burial at Sea DLC, then, are much more anticipated than the already-released Clash in the Clouds. The story DLC will take player back to Rapture, the setting of BioShock and BioShock 2. A teaser mockumentary released last week shows that the characters may play just as big of a part in Rapture as they did in Columbia. Irrational and 2K today released a five-minute, un-cut look at the beginning of the first episode of the DLC. It shows an alternate-universe Booker as he is approached by the sultry alternate-universe Elizabeth. She leads him on a short tour of a pre-disaster Rapture, complete with bystanders throwing out Randian quips. On close inspection, however, not everything seems perfect and it becomes clear that Burial at Sea might just detail how Rapture fell in the first place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_8cLOuLBH3E

Analysts said it would happen. Professor Stephen Hawking said it should happen. And now it has. Peter Higgs, the man who first predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, or ‘God particle’, has been given a Nobel Prize for his efforts along with Belgian physicist Francois Englert. It’s been a long time coming. For Peter Ware Higgs, an emeritus (or retired) professor at the University of Edinburgh first told us of this tiny but all-powerful particle way back in 1964. Trouble is, it’s taken us a good while to track it down. It took the world’s biggest machine — the Large Hadron Collider (so big it sits in Switzerland but spills out over the French border) and some of the finest minds in science to track it down. But once they did, Peter Higgs was something of a shoe-in for the ultimate gong in science. So, here’s the lowdown on this subatomic bad boy. 1. It should be called the Goddamn Particle American physicist Leon Lederman first used the name God Particle in a book; claiming he picked it because the Higgs boson was crucial to understanding the way the Universe works but is also pretty elusive. Lederman joked that he actually wanted to call it the Goddamn Particle because it’s so goddamn hard to find and because of the expense it has caused. After all, the LHC did cost a whacking great £2.6 billion to build and then there’s the electricity bill… But he reckons his publisher would never have gone with the “goddamn” name. 2. We’re surrounded by a Higgs treacle As bizarre as it sounds, physicists reckon the universe is filled with an invisible treacle — known as the Higgs field. Some particles interact with it loads, and it gives them a lot of mass. But others, such as particles of light, don’t interact with it at all. In other words, it’s this Higgs field that’s responsible for giving everything — you, me, goats, planets — mass. A Higgs boson is just one tiny, tiny blob of this treacle. 3. We haven’t actually seen one The Large Hadron Collider can be thought of as a crash test centre for subatomic particles. It’s operators — the physicists — send protons around circuits and when they’re going fast enough (99.99 per cent the speed of light), they smash them into each other. It’s the wreckage of these collisions they’re interested in. Peter Higgs is receiving his Nobel because Higgs bosons were spotted in the wreckage. Only, they weren’t. Or not directly, at least. The thing is, these crafty little particles actually break down pretty quickly into even smaller ones. And these break down into even smaller ones. And so on. What the physicists have to do is track back through the ‘decay paths’ to see whether there’s likely to have been a Higgs boson at the start. And after some collisions, they think there was. 4. The Higgs idea got off to a wobbly start Back in 1964, Peter Higgs wrote two scientific papers, each just a couple of pages of A4 paper long. One of them was accepted by the journal Physical Letters and the other was rejected. Another physicist took a gander and suggested a few tweeks. Peter Higgs added a paragraph saying that in certain conditions the Higgs field would give up a particle — and hey presto the Higgs boson was born and the research paper was accepted. 5. Don’t believe the hype Read lots of accounts about what the Higgs boson is and you’ll discover that it’s the thing that gives mass to everything in the Universe. But it ain’t. The Higgs field actually just gives mass to what’s known as elementary particles — ones that can’t be broken down into smaller chunks. But all stuff — the aforementioned you, me, goats, planets — are actually made up of composite particles like electrons: particles made up of several components. And with these there’s another force — known as the strong nuclear force — that gives them mass too. In fact, it gives everything most of its mass.

This absolutely amazing and terrifying prank, where a girl with telekinetic powers appears to freak out in a coffee shop, is actually a publicity stunt for the upcoming remake of the film Carrie. But that doesn't make it any less entertaining or awesome. Make sure you watch it all the way through, too, it just gets better and better. Using everything from fake walls, to hidden pulleys, to remote control tables, to even spring-loaded shelves full of books, the customers stopping by this innocent looking cafe have no idea they're about to witness a girl with telekinetic powers lose control after a stranger knocks over her drink. And by 'stranger' we of course mean 'fellow actor,' but the terrified patrons don't know that. If the Carrie remake is half as entertaining as this video is, we'll definitely be there on opening night—although we probably can't say the same for the terrified folks in these clips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VlOxlSOr3_M

In an interesting post-mortem release by the creators of the defunct anonymous marketplace Atlantis there is information that the former admins and users of the Silk Road are planning to resurrect the service. User RR writes: “We have SilkRoad v2.0 ready to launch and is now in its final testing stages. Our site has all the features of the original one and we have kept the same style of forum for your ease.” The new SilkRoad will be sending out anonymous invites to former vendors and then open to the Tor-using public soon after. The representatives of Atlantis write: Users are already planning ways to keep the new site secure. This includes the creation of something called BitWasp, an “open source, anonymous bitcoin marketplace specifically built for use in conjunction with Tor or I2P via the hidden services such as .onion websites and eepsites.” What does this mean for law enforcement and fans of the original Silk Road? First SR won’t be dead for long and I suspect that hackers, now emboldened, will produce many more SR-like sites than any government can police. While the last mile problem of shipping products to and from vendors and clients can still be controlled by customs and postal authorities, I doubt it will be as easy to take down these variegated new services. writes the Atlantis representative.

I've immediately sent this to my grandma...

Finally an intelligent question!

Jealous of those elite Google Glass explorers who are the first to try out the camera-equipped smart glasses (for $1,500)? Now you can film your life with a subtler wearable gadget that costs just $279, starting next month. Slightly larger than an iPod Shuffle, the Narrative Clip (formerly known as Memoto) takes photos twice a minute all day so that anyone can capture all the special moments in their lives — up to nearly 3,000 photos, or 4 GB per day of data. Special software organizes the photos so the flood of images doesn't become overwhelming. It clips onto a collar or can be worn like a necklace. Initially funded on Kickstarter late last year and the new recipient of $3 million in venture funding led by True Ventures, the founders of Narrative say their mission is to create the "ultimate lifelogging device." While "lifelogging" used to conjure up images of a solitary geek — such as wearable pioneer Steve Mann — covered in awkward wires, cables and belts, new wearables such Narrative Clip promise to be unobtrusive. Who wants wearable tech? Company co-founder Oskar Kalmaru said that initial Kickstarter backers have come from many walks of life: early-adopter types, yes, but also people with a specific use in mind. "People who travel a lot, [or] parents of young children who want to capture these rare early moments," he told Tom's Guide. "You can't have too many photos of that." Narrative Clip's software sorts through all the photos taken in a day and separates them into "moments" based on time and GPS data. "Going to work is one moment, meeting for coffee is one moment," Kalmaru said. Then the computer algorithm automatically picks what it thinks is the "best" picture to display from that moment, chosen by factors like brightness, sharpness, whether there are people in the photo, and how colorful it is. (Users can always click through each photo if they want to.) "Any camera can take photos, but organizing those photos and making sense of them" is the draw with the Clip, Kalmaru told us. The software runs on Android and iOS and photos can also be accessed through the Web. The team is also interested in getting a client to work on Linux. The actual crunching and storage of photos takes place in the cloud, and all of this will cost an extra $9 plus tax per month. (Alternately, users can store all their photos locally and nothave access to Memoto's algorithms.) Kalmaru and co-founder Martin Källström believed they'd have working Clips in customers' hands by February 2013. But Kalmaru said that turned out to be optimistic. "You might have thought, 'this is [just] a camera...'" he said. Turns out, "We have three products, not one like we thought....We have a really high-tech complex hardware unit, we have a high-tech back-end, and the third part is these apps for Android and iPhone." Building all three together and troubleshooting the bugs turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. Finally, however, Narrative expects the first Clips to go out to early Kickstarter backers Nov. 1, and interested buyers who didn't get in on the Kickstarter can pre-order one for $279, to be shipped in the future (after all the backers first get theirs and are ensured a smooth experience) Wearables and privacy A lot of work went into the design of the Clip, Kalmaru said. "We tried to give it a friendly feel." Users found that a round camera looked too much like a "Big Brother"-esque eye, but they also expressed a desire that the product not be too camouflaged -- in other words, it should look like a camera. That would allow friends who don't want to be recorded to notice the device and ask the wearer to remove it. Still, a lot of the concerns being raised over privacy in the company of lifeloggers sound awfully familiar. "I read somewhere that [after the introduction of] the first cameras you were able to carry with you in the 1920s, much of the same type of worries were raised," Kalmaru said. (And in fact, after the Kodak camera was first introduced, the Hartford Courant wrote: "The sedate citizen can't indulge in any hilariousness without the risk of being caught in the act.") Added Kalmaru: "This is a worry that has been around much longer than wearable cameras have been around."

The latest analysis of the bollide that burst over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February suggests that the risk from such airbursts — which occur when friction in our atmosphere heats up a meteor — may be greater than previously thought. Meteorite collisions are often compared in size to nuclear explosions, but because they are speeding toward Earth they have momentum that makes them far more destructive. And to make matters worse, they may occur more often than currently estimated. On the morning of Feb. 15, a fireball lit up the skies above the town of Chelyabinsk. A 12,000-ton bollide estimated to be roughly 20 meters in diameter came screaming into the atmosphere at more than 42,000 mph. Locals could feel the heat from the blast while dozens of dashboard cameras made recordings of the event, which were disseminated widely on social media. The best estimates of how much energy was released by the Chelyabinsk explosion come from infrasound measurements taken by an array of sensors all over the world. These instruments detect low-frequency sound waves traveling through the atmosphere. The longer the waves’ period is, the larger the explosion. Infrasound measurements are calibrated from atmospheric nuclear testing done in the 1950s, which is why asteroid explosions are often described in megaton units. The bomb that exploded at Hiroshima had a yield of 16 kilotons while the most powerful nuclear weapon active in U.S. service, the B83 bomb, has a yield of up to 1.2 megatons. The Chelyabinsk blast is estimated to have been between 200 and 800 kilotons, on par with a huge atomic weapon. But meteors explode in a very different way than a typical nuclear bomb, says physicist Mark Boslough of the Sandia National Laboratories, who studies asteroid impacts and is presenting a talk today about the Chelyabinsk event at the American Astronomical Society’s 2013 Division for Planetary Science meeting in Denver. Boslough said. For that reason, the people who live in Chelyabinsk explosion are very lucky to be alive, he added. If the bollide had come into the atmosphere at a less steep angle, its blast would have been aimed right at the ground, likely doing much more damage. That an airburst continues traveling in the same direction as a meteorite was only appreciated starting in the 1990s, particularly after the impact of Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter. This understanding has led to revisions in estimates of the size of the asteroid that exploded over the Siberian tundra in 1908. This blast, known as the Tunguska event, flattened trees over a 2,000-square-kilometer area. Scientists in the mid-20th century used nuclear blast comparisons to estimate Tunguska’s power. To make trees fall down over that large an area, a nuclear weapon would have to be 10 to 20 megatons. Now knowing how asteroid impact bursts can deliver more energy to the ground, the Tunguska bollide estimate has gotten smaller, suggesting that an object of roughly 100,000 tons entered the atmosphere and delivered a blast of between 3 and 5 megatons. Tunguska and Chelyabinsk are thought to be among the most powerful asteroid impacts in recent history. That both would come within about 100 years of one another is slightly worrying to scientists like Boslough. That’s because current estimates are that an impact the size of Chelyabinsk should happen roughly once a century while a Tunguska-level event should happen once every millennium. To see two such once-in-a-long-while events within close succession makes “you wonder if you’ve got your probabilities right,” said Boslough. He gave a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation suggesting that the chances of these two occurrences — plus a third airburst near South Africa in 1963 (.pdf) that was somewhere in size between Chelyabinsk and Tunguska and was was only observed by infrasound sensors — is somewhere on the order of 0.2 percent. Our current probability estimates of asteroid impacts are most calculated using astronomical data. Telescopes search for space rocks and note the number that cross Earth’s orbit. But models based on these asteroid surveys have a lot of assumptions built into them, mostly because detecting asteroids is a big challenge, particularly smaller ones that would cause airbursts, and we don’t know exactly how many more of them we have yet to find. It’s possible that we’ve missed many and that airbursts like Chelyabinsk and Tunguska happen more than once a century or millennium. Agreeing with this assessment is geoscientist Peter Schultz of Brown University, who said that Chelyabinsk “should be kind of an eye-opener.” After all, he added, Earth experiences an airburst explosion similar in energy to Hiroshima almost every year, but they are more likely to happen over the ocean or uninhabited areas and go unnoticed by people other than the scientists who track them. Geological evidence also suggests that larger asteroids that hit the Earth’s surface strike more frequently than we think. In Argentina alone, scientists have found glass that was formed in impacts from about eight or nine large events that occurred in the last 10 million years. said Schultz. On the other hand, that Chelyabinsk and Tunguska happened in close succession might just be a fluke. Boslough said that two data points in of themselves shouldn’t make us believe that asteroid impacts happen more frequently than we think. he said. As with anything relying on probability, we will simply have to wait and see. The longer we observe asteroid impacts on Earth, the better we will be able to estimate their frequency. It’s pretty much a guarantee that “eventually we’ll have a close encounter of a bad kind,” said Schultz.

Locking eyes with someone may not be the universal route to persuasion. “Stand up straight and look people in the eye”—so go the most basic commandments of engaging confidently with your fellow humans. But a new study finds that eye contact is not a blanket solution to persuading your conversation partners. Depending on how someone’s opinions square up to yours, eye contact can have the opposite effect. Prior research and anecdotal evidence suggest that people who make eye contact are more “persuasive, likable, and competent,” write the study’s authors. But regardless of how persuasive a person may seem because they look others in the eye, if their message is somehow controversial or disagreeable, their eye contact may ruin their chance of convincing someone. For one study, the authors had participants fill out surveys of their political views and then watch a handful of videos of speakers discussing “hot-button” political issues, some of them looking into the camera and some looking away. The participants were allowed to look wherever they wanted, and the researchers used eye tracking software to see how often the participants gazed into the eyes of the speakers. They then measured how convinced they were by the speaker’s points. The participants tended to look in the eyes of speakers whose views they shared more. This suggests a confirmation bias in the idea that people who use eye contact are more persuasive—according to this study, eye contact seems to occur more often when the person listening is already generally on board with what the speaker is saying. Participants also tended to look at a speaker’s eyes more when the speaker was looking away. However, the longer a viewer spent looking at a speaker, especially if the speaker was looking at them directly, the less the viewer was persuaded by the speaker’s points. The effect was more pronounced for issues on which the viewer either opposed the speaker or had no opinion. In the second study, the researchers presented participants with videos of a speaker they disagreed with on some issue, with some instructed to look at the speaker’s eyes and others his mouth. Again, the researchers tracked the participants’ eyes and gave them questionnaires on their beliefs before and after the videos to see how their views had changed. The researchers found that viewers who were allowed to look at the speaker’s mouth rather than his eyes ended up more persuaded by what he was saying than participants who had been made to look him in the eyes. Eye contact seemed to have negatively affected the speaker’s ability to be convincing. The authors suggest that their findings run counter to the oft-repeated advice to look people in the eyes—eye contact is not always persuasive. This may have its roots in evolution. Between animals, eye contact is sometimes “competitive or hostile,” signifying aggression, conflict, and an opponent’s need to prepare to defend rather than an attempt to win someone over or to your side of an argument. “The very experience of meeting the gaze of a disagreeing other… creates a social dynamic characterized by resistance to persuasion,” write the researchers. The scope of the study was small and conducted only on university students, and the authors acknowledge that the reasons for the lack of attitude changes and behaviors in the two studies may not be linked. They further note that eye contact has a number of social uses beyond persuasion, like signaling “openness to approach and trust.” But when it comes to being convincing, the solution to persuasiveness problems may not be so simple and may even be worsened by an unflinching gaze.

With the iPhone 5s launch behind us, industry watchers are now turning up the heat as they sniff around for details on next year’s iPhone 6. We have already seen a few early reports from multiple solid sources suggest Apple will finally make the move to a larger display in next year’s iPhone 6, and now another report from a well-respected source suggests Apple is indeed finally getting ready to satisfy critics and launch a smartphone with a larger screen. Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek on Monday issued a research note to investors in which he reversed course on Apple. Misek previously had a Hold rating on Apple shares with a $450 price target, but he’s now bullish on Apple’s prospects. As a result, Misek upped his target to $600 on Monday morning and slapped a Buy rating on Apple’s stock. There are a few reasons for the analyst’s change of heart, one of which is that his supply chain sources indicate that Apple is getting more favorable prices from its component suppliers. This is a change from Misek’s position earlier this year and if accurate, it would obviously boost Apple’s bottom line. Beyond margins, however, the analyst says Apple is finally going to cave and launch an iPhone 6 with a bigger display. “Despite still seeing risk to CQ4 and FY13 revs, we now believe better [gross margins] will allow Apple to skate by until iPhone 6 launches with its 4.8″ screen,” Misek wrote in the note. ”We est ~50% of smartphone shipments have >4″ screens and that iPhone 6 will catalyze a large upgrade cycle. The stock is attractive based on the attitude change, FY15 revs >+15%, and valuation.” Misek has had a few good calls regarding unreleased Apple products in the past, and he is considered by many to be among the top analysts covering Apple right now. That certainly doesn’t make an iPhone 6 with a 4.8-inch display a done deal, but it adds fuel to earlier reports from The Wall Street Journal and plugged in KGI Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo. Apple shares jumped more than 1% on Misek’s report.

It's bad enough when FedEx or UPS throw your delivery onto your porch. But a home security camera catches a USPS truck driving across a lawn so it can get closer to the front door. There will never come a day when you have truly seen it all. As living proof of this belief, might I offer you this footage from the security camera owned by Mark Anderson of LaGrange, Ga. Anderson had set up his home technology primarily to monitor his disabled mother. He linked it to a private YouTube account. However, when he took a quick look at what was going on at home from his desk at work, you might imagine his incredulity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hs_9s31Je7Y For there was a USPS delivery woman bringing a package to his door. There was one small issue with her method of delivery. In order, it seemed, to make it easier to get to Anderson's front door, the USPS driver had maneuvered her truck straight across his lawn. Anderson made the footage public to only 10 people. But then it appeared on Reddit and soon, on YouTube, where it was noted: "The package was not heavy in any way, and yet this woman made the decision to do this." He said he recorded this footage using open-source iSpyconnect software with a Panasonic camera. He told The Blaze that he'd like the USPS to reprimand the woman in some way.

Reports say it could be draining into the Pacific Ocean Another tank holding toxic water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan is leaking water, according to officials. According to a new report from Reuters, the Fukushima plant's operator discovered a leak in another tank on site, which may be draining toxic water into the Pacific Ocean. The report said approximately 430 liters (113 gallons) of water spilled over a period of as much as 12 hours. The water that leaked had 200,000 becquerels per liter of radioactive isotopes, including strontium 90. The legal limit for strontium 90 is 30 becquerels per liter. The water likely flowed into a trench leading to the Pacific Ocean -- which is about 300 m (330 yards) from the tank. A plant worker reportedly misjudged how much water the tank could hold. To top it off, the tank is tilting on an uneven area. Japan's government is learning that Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) isn't handling the containment of toxic water as well as it had hoped. The government stepped in last month and said it would help improve water management at the plant. In fact, it came up with an idea to create an "ice wall" around the plant. The ice wall technique turns soil into a permafrost-type condition through the use of refrigerated coolant. This would build an underground containment wall made of ice to hold the water and stop it from going into the Pacific. However, the ice wall won't be completed anytime soon. The government doesn't have a cost estimate for the project yet, but Kajima Corp. -- the construction company that largely built the nuclear plant -- has until March 31, 2014 to create a feasibility study of the ice wall. The government would like the project to be completed by July 2015. Back in August, it was reported that Fukushima is leaking about 300 tonnes of toxic water into the Pacific Ocean per day. The water, which is seeping through the soil and through the plant into the ocean, contains radioactive particles of cesium, tritium and strontium. This all started in March 2011, when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake shook Japan and crippled the reactor at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. It caused quite a bit of havoc with the release of radioactive water, contamination of crops and of course, the thousands of lives lost. Ever since, Tepco has been pouring "hundreds of metric tons" of water per day over the Fukushima reactors to keep them cool. The toxic water is then stored in tanks above ground. But many are raising questions as to whether the storage tanks are strong or large enough to contain all the water.

Samsung shows camera module with 13MP sensor, image stabilization Future smartphones from Samsung could have greatly improved photographs, thanks to the company's new camera sensor. The 13-megapixel component includes an anti-shake function that is able to correct angular errors of up to 1.5 degrees, writes Tech-On, beating the 0.7 degrees offered by other mobile camera sensors. The module can also produce an image that is eight times brighter than earlier generations of the item, allowing it to be used effectively in low light situations. Samsung Electro-Mechanics is negotiating with smartphone producers and plans volume production early next year.

If you read any amount of science fiction, you’ll probably come up against the idea of alien life based on some element other than carbon. Almost universally, this element is silicon, but some writers have gone further afield in imagining totally novel forms of life — for instance, Carl Sagan once imagined life forms that could evolve and thrive in the gaseous sea that is Jupiter (aside from its core). Still, why do most writers consistently turn to silicon as the most likely carbon substitute? And why is carbon the basis of all life currently known? Basically, the answer is that life is complex, and more to the point that it must be complex. You can’t create an organism capable of regulating its internal state, of moving, eating and excreting, and of replicating itself to create offspring, without a wide variety of molecules. You’re going to need a central building block that can support complex branched structures while remaining strong — but not so strong that you can’t easily rearrange the whole thing later. There’s also the fact that carbon happens to be an abundant element on Earth, one available to early replicators, but for the most part we are carbon-based because carbon makes a good backbone. The reason carbon has this property is somewhat complicated but can be boiled down to this: when bonding with other atoms due to its natural chemical properties, carbon will form four bonds. There are only a few elements that can do this naturally. Oxygen, for instance, will naturally form two bonds (think H2O). The four-bond structure allows a wide variety of possible chains with branches that have branches that have branches. When a bonding slot is unwanted, the carbon-hydrogen bond that usually fills the gap isn’t very reactive, so it won’t interfere with whatever else might be going on in the area. Probably not how silicon based life would actually look. Consider the periodic table of elements, which is arranged so that elements with the same number of bonding slots (in parlance, the same number of “valence electrons”) will lie in vertical columns. This means that if you find carbon (element #6) and look directly below it, you’ll find the next most logical element to form the backbone of a living system — and ‘lo, we find silicon. This is why science fiction tends toward postulating silicon-based life: it shares the main virtue that brought carbon to power here on Earth. Looking further down the list brings us to less used elements like Germanium and Tin — these heavy elements are large and unwieldy, forming weaker bonds than their higher vertical neighbors because they hold other atoms a greater distance from their nucleus. Within the class of elements that can form complex molecules, carbon has helpful chemical properties for making and breaking chemical bonds. We already know of several thousand species that use silicon extensively in their overall biology — but none of them use silicon in DNA, so they are still considered to be carbon-based. Carbon forms strong double and triple bonds, not just allowing the branched structure of DNA but protecting that structure with strong chemical properties. The fact is that life probably could technically arise from a wide variety of molecules, but carbon seems to be by far the most likely. A species based on silicon might be funneled down roughly similar evolutionary paths as a carbon-based one, but something based on, say, phosphorus could turn out totally unrecognizable. Everything from its physical structure to its method of genetic inheritance would have to be wildly different. When imagining alien species, the most outlandish concepts would start not from a different environment, but from an totally different sort of chemistry.

Samsung has already announced to launch its curved display smartphones this month. Now its rival LG announces to launch its own curved display smartphones of 6-inch. LG Electronics' Display unit has announced today to start the mass-production of the world’s first flexible OLED panel for smartphone. Dr. Sang Deog Yeo, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of LG Display, said, “LG Display is launching a new era of flexible displays for smartphones with its industry-leading technology. The flexible display market is expected to grow quickly as this technology is expected to expand further into diverse applications including automotive displays, tablets and wearable devices. Our goal is to take an early lead in the flexible display market by introducing new products with enhanced performance and differentiated designs next year.” LG Display also claims that 6-inch curved display is the world’s slimmest and lightest and largest among current smartphone OLED displays. This flexible OLED panel is made up of plastic substrates which use a film-type encapsulation technology and a protection film to the back of the panel that makes it curved yet unbreakable. This curved display radius is 700mm from top to bottom. This vertically concave panel is just 0.44mm thick that makes it the world’s slimmest among current panels. Its weight is also just 7.2g that makes it world’s lightest. LG has already launched the world’s first curved 55-inch OLED TV panel at CES 2013. Samsung's curved display TV is also in the market. The research firm IHS Display Bank predicts that the flexible display market will grow to reach USD 1.5 billion worldwide by 2016 and USD 10 billion by 2019. Hence a more room is there for new innovative technology of curved display devices especially in smartphone market. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vO3HdcWDd9I

"We usually just talk using Emojis." This is what 18-year-old Hope R. told me in a recent conversation we had about how she and her friends use their phones to communicate with one another. The college freshman, who has had an iPhone for two years and admits she "only calls her parents on the phone and no one else, really", explained that emojis sent alongside every text are the new normal. When I asked her about email, she dismissed it quickly. Emojis, the smileys in Japanese electronic messages and web pages, earned their way into digital culture royalty just a few years back, when various developers created apps for mobile users to download that allowed them the option to add little picture messages into text conversations. When Apple introduced iOS 6, it allowed iPhone users to directly integrate emojis into their keyboard through the OS settings. Now, they're everywhere in pop culture. Katy Perry recently released a video for her hit song "Roar" which consists solely of the lyrics to the song as conveyed through emojis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=e9SeJIgWRPk In 2009, a man named Fred Benenson began a Kickstarter to help him raise money so that he could compile an emoji-only translation of Herman Melville's literary classic Moby Dick. He succeeded, raising just under $4,000, and the book, "Emoji Dick", is still available for sale. http://www.emojidick.com/ An iPhone user myself, I understand. Emojis are fun, and some of the more obvious ones are a quick fix (although, one could argue that we're simply demoting the way we communicate rather than moving forward by sending tiny pictures instead of texting words, which we do instead of talking on the phone or face-to-face). I use the heart and a few of the smiley faces every once in awhile. While it was a hard sell to convince me that emojis were useful, it was undeniable that they were popular, and beginning to shift the foundation of how we communicate, even if only slightly. She sent me her most recently used emojis: Later in the week, Hope and I talked through Facebook chat. As we typed back and forth about emojis, I thought about a scene in the HBO show GIRLS, where two of the characters argue about the state of their relationship at a party. Ray: "You know, when I'm not around you, when you just send me a text full of emojis, it is so easy to dismiss you." Shoshanna: "What is wrong with emojis?" Ray: "A panda next to a gun next to a wrapped gift? It makes no sense." He's right. It makes no sense. There's no translation for a panda next to a gun next to a wrapped gift. And that's what made this scene so popular among viewers. New York Magazine's Vulture created an entire fan fiction-esque text sequence between characters Ray and Shoshanna back in January following the show's season 2 premiere. We have all of these easy ways to communicate, and yet, the way we choose to utilize can sometimes leave us scratching our heads. Hope told me she understood Shoshanna's motives. So why not just say hi? When it comes to communicating with her friends, Hope says she just uses emojis to try to make the conversation a little more aesthetically interesting. She doesn't know when it started to be an everyday thing, but now she says it's weird when people don't use emojis. Again, she reminds me that they're right there in the keyboard, easy to get to and easy to use. This is a conversation Hope sent me between her and one of her friends: Later, when she had to go to class, we agreed to finish up our conversation another time. The next day she texted me, and we finished up the interview in iMessage (I'm in blue): She went on to tell me she sends an emoji of a rocket ship next to a heart when she wants to "send love" to her friends. It wasn't until we had finished talking that I realized we had conducted 90% of our conversation over Facebook chat or text. There were no emails, and only a quick 5 minute phone call. This had nothing to do with whether either of us were in a place where we could talk out loud. Typing, via whatever medium, was apparently the more convenient route to take. She also mentioned that emojis "lightened" the mood. If someone texted something that could be seen as mean, then an emoji would help make it seem friendlier. Take the letter "K" for example. As texting became a more normalized way of communicating over the last few years, it's often been said that sending the one letter "K" (as in "okay") is considered the worst thing you can ever text (according to Buzzfeed). It comes across as "curt, or mean, or rude" according to Hope. Why? I had to ask. Out of the mouths of babes? Maybe not. Screengrabbed from the phones of teens? Absolutely.

There has been no shortage of leaks that claim to show off Google’s next Nexus smartphone (including this not-so-subtle nod from Google itself) over the past weeks and months, but we may have just hit the mother lode this weekend. The folks at Android Police have gotten their hands on a hefty, near-final draft of a 281-page service manual for the forthcoming device, which still technically bears the LG D821 model number. Really though, LG isn’t fooling anyone here. The document is chock full of diagrams and images (some of the device in various states of disassembly) that depict a very familiar-looking phone sporting some Nexus 7-like branding on its rear end. An earlier FCC filing already revealed some of the juicy details — the inclusion of a 4.95-inch 1080p IPS screen and a 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 with 2GB of RAM — but this newly leaked manual manages to shine a little extra light (not to mention extra credibility) on those earlier reports. The new Nexus will likely be available in 16 or 32GB variants, and will feature an LTE radio and an 8-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization (there’s no mention of that crazy Nikon tech, though). NFC, wireless charging, and that lovely little notification light are back, too, but don’t expect a huge boost in longevity — it’s going to pack a sealed 2,300mAh battery, up slightly from the 2100mAh cell that powered last year’s Nexus 4. That spec sheet should sound familiar to people who took notice of what happened with the Nexus 4. Just as that device was built from the foundation laid by the LG Optimus G, the Nexus 5 (or whatever it’s going to be called) seems like a mildly revamped version of LG’s G2. At this point I’d usually urge you to approach such leaks with caution, but it hardly seems necessary now. As much as I love my mental image of a lone prankster toiling into the wee hours of the morning on a meticulously crafted forgery, the sheer complexity and granularity of the information contained in this document makes that scenario an unlikely one. And the icing on the cake? LG asked Android Police to pull the offending document and images earlier today — AP complied with the request, but there’s no way to get the cat back into its bag now. It’s hard to argue with the timing, too. The first anniversary of the Nexus 4’s unveiling is fast approaching, and as solid as the device was, it found itself being outclassed by a more powerful breed of smartphone within a matter of months. The Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus 4 made their official debuts in October 2011 and 2012 respectively, and now that we’ve got persistent rumors of a Google event scheduled for October 14 floating around, I’d wager all this cloak-and-dagger business should be dispensed with very shortly. Until then, feel free to dig around in the full document below for more technical tidbits — happy hunting! http://www.scribd.com/doc/173744848/LG-D821